When I lived in Rhode Island during my teaching years, I learned that consumers could choose the type of energy delivered to our homes as a simple way to increase the demand for renewable energy. I asked around and landed on Arcadia, which helped me to access community solar. A community solar farm produced clean energy and sent it back to our local power grid. We received savings credits for every kWh of energy our share generated. I just learned that Arcadia is at it again — this time, it is partnering with Everon, a global EV charging platform. Together, the two companies are planning new solutions for 2020 that will make it easier for all EV drivers in the US to charge sustainably.
Everon operates in one of the fastest growing sectors, eMobility. Its platform is white label, hardware agnostic, supports over 21 different languages, and allows businesses to integrate with various APIs.
Arcadia leverages combined purchasing power to negotiate lower energy rates for consumers while connecting them to clean, renewable energy from US wind and solar farms. Together, they’ve created a gestalt that will create integrated opportunities for charging platforms that will have the potential to benefit both companies and consumers looking to deepen their renewable energy decisions.
CleanTechnica Exclusive: Understanding the Everon & Arcadia Solution
We reached out to Michael May, digital marketing manager for Everon, to learn more about the new Everon & Arcadia collaboration.
What benefits emerge for both companies and for consumers with an Everon & Arcadia partnership?
“Arcadia is a utility and delivers renewables to their EV drivers. Everon provides everything necessary for the driver to plan where to charge, how to pay for it, and to get access to the clean energy from Arcadia to combat emissions. More in depth, this means we provide a white label app to Arcadia that they can provide their drivers. This has a map where all the charge locations are shown. We connect all the roaming partners from different networks to a single bill so that the customer receives only one bill in the end.
“For us, it means commercial expansion, reaching EV drivers in the US. This is our first big deal in the US, and we are looking to expand our business there.
“For Arcadia, it means providing all the tools for EV drivers and access to all charging stations via our roaming contracts. For EV drivers at the moment, it’s quite hard to find stations, to know if they are available, and to be able to charge at any station. Moreover, customers receive multiple bills from multiple station owners or power suppliers. We solve those problems for them. Furthermore, the Everon platform provides valuable insights into charging behavior and provides Arcadia with grid services to protect and manage their grid.”
What is an EV charging management platform? The Everon site says, “With Everon you can manage your roaming networks, charging stations, charging sites, tokens, users, billing, propositions.” What does that mean in practical terms?
“An EV charging management platform is a platform as a service solution that enables any business to deploy a charging network. Meaning, that through our platform we give you control and insights over your charging stations and your drivers who use them to charge their EV. It’s basically a plug & play solution for anyone that sees business in charging stations.
“We provide our solutions to many different customer and account types. But, in general, if you own charging stations at your site or municipality, we allow you to make your stations smart and also provide integrations — so that, for example, you can connect any 3rd party billing system. Our platform allows multiple roaming partners, which means that your stations can operate with any of the supported charge cards that our roaming partners provide.
“This is great for the EV drivers, because now they can use any card for any station to charge their EV’s. Imagine if you drive your Tesla in some unknown lands, and you seek to charge it. Coming to a charge station, you realize your charge cards are not supported by the station. Bummer!”
In what ways will Arcadia participate when a company wants to develop an EV charging management platform?
“Arcadia is a utility and will provide power to drivers via charging stations that a business can set up. Our platform basically resides in-between; we make the connection from power to charging stations to drivers possible.”
What responsibilities does each company have as part of the collaboration?
“For Everon, providing a secure, open and stable platform. So that any customer of Arcadia (which in this case acts as Everon’s tenant) will have a seamless experience from Arcadia (white labelled from Everon) and providing valuable and stable grid balancing services — smart charging, demand response, dynamic load balancing. For Arcadia, it means delivering clean power to drivers.”
Final Thoughts
Arcadia is the only nationwide tech company focused on consumer energy, Arcadia’s software bundles clean energy, energy efficiency tools, rate monitoring, and more in a simplified, modern account experience. Founded in 2014, the company’s platform integrates with over 125 utilities across 50 states, manages 4.5 terawatt-hours of residential energy demand, is the largest US residential energy broker, and manages the most community solar subscribers in the US.
“Electric vehicles are a crucial step forward in the fight against climate change, but it can be difficult for drivers to navigate where to charge, how to charge, and what it will cost,” said Kiran Bhatraju, CEO of Arcadia. “Together with Everon we’re building tools to accelerate EV demand by making charging with renewable energy convenient and affordable.”
Kristof Vereenooghe, CEO of Everon, says, “We have been impressed with Arcadia’s vision on building a 100% renewable future and their collective impact approach by offering the best clean energy. The combination of such vision with Everon’s charging management platform transforms the way EV drivers experience electric driving and charging, while using clean energy to maximize environmental impact.”
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